Brendan Gill famous quotes

03-28-2025

Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious.
-- Brendan Gill

#Life #Ideas #Favors
In the later nineteenth century, the tops of skyscrapers often took the shape of domes, surmounted by jaunty gilded lanterns; later came ziggurats, mausoleums, Alexandrian lighthouses, miniature Parthenons. These charming follies contained neither royal corpses nor effigies of gods and goddesses; rather they contained large wooden tanks filled with water.
-- Brendan Gill

#Water #Shapes #Domes
It is in the nature of the New Yorker to be as topical as possible, on a level that is often small in scale and playful in intention.
-- Brendan Gill

#Levels #Intention #Scales
To die quickly in one's eighth decade at the very top of one's powers is an enviable end, and not an occasion for mourning.
-- Brendan Gill

#Death #Mourning #Ends
The ingenuities we practice in order to appear admirable to ourselves would suffice to invent the telephone twice over on a rainy summer morning.
-- Brendan Gill

#Summer #Morning #Order
I will try to cram these paragraphs full of facts and give them a weight and shape no greater than that of a cloud of blue butterflies.
-- Brendan Gill

#Butterfly #Eye #Clouds
Obscenity is a notable enhancer of life and is suppressed at grave peril to the arts.
-- Brendan Gill

#Art #Notable #Obscenity
Parody is homage gone sour.
-- Brendan Gill

#Gone #Parody #Sour
Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run.
-- Brendan Gill

#Running #War #Inspirational Life
Avain attempt to subdue that unsubduable country.
-- Brendan Gill

#Country

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